{"id":12,"date":"2011-07-12T00:40:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-12T00:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/?p=12"},"modified":"2013-12-23T00:46:25","modified_gmt":"2013-12-23T00:46:25","slug":"dc-day-the-fourth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/?p=12","title":{"rendered":"DC – Day the Fourth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Diana commented that in all our time in DC, today we took our first guided tour.\u00a0 We toured the Capitol Building<\/a>.\u00a0 Our tour was at 9:30, and we showed up early to be sure we had time to get through the security line.\u00a0 The line wasn’t bad when we got there (about 30-50 long on our side of the Visitors’ Center<\/i>), but it looked like the line does get nasty during the day.<\/p>\n

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The Capitol Visitors’ Center had some nice displays about the history of the Capitol and houses some of the National Statuary Hall Collection<\/a> of statues.<\/p>\n

The tour begins with a nice film about the Capitol and what is accomplished there, then a guide leads you through the Crypt, the Rotunda, and Statuary Hall.\u00a0 Now, think about the logistics for a second.\u00a0 The tour is about 20 or 30 minutes long.\u00a0 Tours begin every ten minutes.\u00a0 Each tour is split up and led by four or five tour guides.\u00a0 Do you have a picture of how many different tour guides are shepherding separate groups around the Capitol simultaneously?\u00a0 Well, each guide speaks in a normal speaking voice into a mic that is broadcast to headphones that his group wears.\u00a0 So the noise level isn’t bad, but those headphones are kinda quirky.\u00a0 If your guide goes behind a marble column — you’ve lost audio.\u00a0 If your guide gets too far ahead — you’ve lost audio.\u00a0 Sometimes your headphones just don’t work.\u00a0 I had to exchange my first set, Diana went through four sets before she got on that worked.\u00a0 The tour was quick but good.\u00a0 We didn’t feel rushed, and the guide was very friendly and knowledgeable.<\/p>\n

From the Capitol Visitors’ Center, we took the underground tunnel to the Library of Congress<\/a> (which meant we didn’t have to go through security again… though the Library of Congress also inspects bags upon your departure).\u00a0 There were a handful of fascinating displays and great architecture\/ornamentation.\u00a0 They are currently displaying Thomas Jefferson’s library, which he sold to the Congress for $26,000 to form the original collection of the Library of Congress.<\/p>\n

Next we walked to the Supreme Court<\/a>.\u00a0 You can see the court room, walk the halls and see statues and portraits of many justices, and view the two spiral staircases<\/a> (which are amazing pieces of architecture with no center support).\u00a0 The cafeteria here was really good.\u00a0 There’s a salad bar, many ready-to-go meals, and custom-built hot sandwiches.<\/p>\n

We took the Metro to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing<\/a> to see the Visitor’s Center there (skipped the tour) and returned to our motel.\u00a0 For dinner, we went to the Hard Times Cafe<\/a> — a “Chile Parlour” — which was pretty good.\u00a0 Tomorrow we catch a train!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diana commented that in all our time in DC, today we took our first guided tour.\u00a0 We toured the Capitol Building.\u00a0 Our tour was at 9:30, and we showed up early to be sure we had time to get through the security line.\u00a0 The line wasn’t bad when we got there (about 30-50 long on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}